The Desert

So it would seem there is some extreme catching up to do. Life gets rolling, literally, and I get behind. My national park tour was continued slightly as I drove to the Grand Canyon after Zion. When I was in college, I did a six-day trip along the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But that was sadly…oh…um…like ten years ago. I remember it being the most amazing place, but I was wondering after all my recent national park stops how it would compare. And although Arches many well still be my favorite, the Grand Canyon is still amazing. It’s hard to take it in from one place or even one view it’s so big. It was fun to look down in the canyon and pick out the various mesas I remember camping on. Pretty cool. So for all those wondering it’s still there—still a big hole. Although I was a little surprised at all the blackened forest surrounding it. I don’t remember hearing about a huge forest fire there.


From the GC, I drove out to the Navajo and Hopi reservations and down through the Painted Desert. I find it rather interesting that two tribes, who in history weren’t the friendliest tribes with each other, have reservations on top of each other. Quite literally the Hopi reservation is in the middle, completely surrounded by Navajo reservation. Just thought that was interesting, nice of us to set that up for them.

The Painted Desert is a difficult thing to actually see. There are no roads that really go through it, and a barren flat space that is pretty much a horizontal line is hard to see. But I did take the nearest road I could find to drive through it and can you believe it start to spit rain. I was for practical purposes in the desert and it was raining. Interesting!

The next stop was Flagstaff. I don’t know whether it was because it was the first real town/city I had been in for a while. Or maybe it was just nice to be in a place with life, but the downtown area of Flagstaff was awesome. I loved it. I could have walked around forever. Alas it was only a few blocks, but I still enjoyed it. Also did my fair share of train track dodging. I felt initiated.


Now Arizona is an odd place. It seems like it should be a desert, dry and flat but there are National Forests, mountains, even volcanoes there.I stopped and looked at a few of them on my way to Tucson (yes not the most popular stop in July). I also stopped at some old pueblo ruins on my way down. This place sits out in the middle of the desert with nothing in sight and you have to wonder what it was like when it was built. There’s no way to tell really how old they are, but they guess around mid 1200s. Pretty crazy that any part of it is still standing or that anyone could survive living out there.


I also stopped at Montezuma’s Castle. I would have loved to go up inside of this place, but they closed it to the public a long time ago. Here’s something that blew my mind…this cliff dwelling was built around the same time as Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Um, slightly different building styles don’t you think?